Combat: Holy Grail or Sick Obsession

[ADGBoss]

I think that is a very interesting distinction but for me it rases two questions:

1) If we are not all equipped to be Doctors and Lawyers, then why wouldn't there be interest in exploring something you are not? I would think it would be similar to playing a character of the opposite gender: exploring a life you could never have.  As an example I would think a M.A.S.H. RPG might be pretty popular. I would buy it anyway :)

2) Are we equipped for Violence OR are we equipped to commit violence? Maybe I am splitting hairs here but let me explain. Basically everyone has the innate animal ability to crack someone else over the head with a lead pipe if provoked. So we all enjoy the feel of the RPG when we take up the mini-gun and explode some ganer boy's loins with it.  However, as Players do we handle violence against us as well? Is it as fun to lose a nutsack to a chaingun weilding maniac? Clearly not.

In my own experience I have seen players who constantly eschew diplomacy or non-violent means of conflict resolution get rather upset when their bloodlust leads to their doom. I have literally witnessed those who started the fight bemoan how no one else stepped in to stop them or tried to talk to the enemy.

As I have said before, I am not advocating in any way getting rid of violence in RPGs but I do think it is worth the effor to re-evaluate it's central role, which some people are already doing in their games and designs, etc...

Sean

[Ria]

In RPGs, the rules that hold us all down are not present. Sure, there are (or should be) consequences in RPGs, but you don't have to negotiatiate everything or at all if you don't want to. There is a visceral thrill in directing your alter ego to take care of something in a way that would not be acceptable in the real world. I certainly would not even consider a game where I had to be a lawyer or an accountant. That's too much like real life, where you have to play by everyone else's rules. I play because I am the hero or villain, I decide my level of involvement, and I take the risk. I answer only to myself in an RPG. I am not like everyone else when I play, I am the champion. I don't want to be stuck in a court room or office just because I could be. I want to do what I can't do in my ordinary, every-day life. If I want to participate in talk-based entertainment, I'll turn on PBS. Just talk is not satisfying, there is no real commitmment, no real risk, no real threat, no real reward.

There are dynamics involved beyond just whether there is too much violence. These include what the GM chooses or does, what the players like to do, the setting, the plot.... I think it is too simplistic to say violence is a problem, when it is just a symptom, not a cause. I also think it is too simplistic to say games promote violence, because designers can't control what people do with them. The level of volence used is a personal choice and can't be blamed on any one thing. Some people will always take the more offensive path, some will take a defensive path, regardless of what a game designer or GM does.

[Vaxalon]

Ever see the movie "Fall Down"?  (Bruce Willis plays a nebbish who finally has had enough, snaps, and just starts beating up and shooting and bazooka-ing everyone who pisses him off).

Might have been "Falling Down"

It was a big hit.

[ADGBoss]

I believe the Actor was Michael Douglas (sp?) at least in the version of Falling Down I saw.

Honestly I am not sure how that contributes to the discussion? Behind the Green Door was a big hit too, so we should make movies about kidnapping, bondage, and rape? Or About the Porn Industry in general?

Driving Miss Daisy was a bigt hit, should we make games about the relationships between Black Drivers and old White Women in the south? To answer Ria's example, since I doubt that we could be either Jessica Tandy or Morgan Freeman in real life, then this game would certianly meet your criteria.

Apollo 13, big hit, its something not everyone can do and it is fairly exciting. Where are all the games about Moon shots?

Where are all the games about being a Fisherman in Alaska? Dangerous, not necessarily violent, but a job that can be quite hazardous. How about the games about climbing Mount Everest? Thats thrill seeking and certianly not everyone is equipped to do it.

/shrug

[Editeed for some spelling... but not all]

Sean

[Ria]

If someone wants to do a game about being a chauffeur or a porn star, they should. Just don't expect me to play it. Just like I don't think playing a lawyer would be fun and I wouldn't do that. In other words, do the game you want and have fun. It's a hobby. It's supposed to be fun. Let people play their characters how they want, with or without violence. People are going to play however they choose, not necessarily how the game developer or GM planned. And there's nothing wrong with that. If it bothers you, play with people who use less violence. Something for fun doesn't need to be so serious, and you always have choices of what you play and with whom. But you can't tell people what they like, and you can't tell people what to write. If you think the RPG industry needs a game without violence, make it.

[Callan S.]

Perhaps its for immersionist needs. You never feel so alive as when you face death. And your PC never feels so alive as when he faces death.

Your not going to get that playing a lawyer facing down a vile corporations CEO.

Though it might be interesting if you wrote a lawyer game where the mechanics of the game force the lawyer to face death at the start of each session (street crime or some such), to hit this immersion moment. That might interesting.

[Andrew Norris]

...If you think the RPG industry needs a game without violence, make it.

I believe that is the point of the discussion. Understanding the role and importance violence plays in current games is useful information to have to design a game like that.

[Bill Cook]

A porno RPG! Brilliant!

[contracycle]

... and round and round the mulberry bush we go.

We default back the moral implications of violence, a stock and near Politically Correct condemnation of any and all violence (despite the fact our Western societies have armed police and a military occupation underway etc etc....).

The question of whether there is "too much violence" is pointless.  Most of our games are built like action thrillers in which violence is the central activity.  If we keep deviating into the morality of violence then we fail to discuss this feature.

The question keeps returning to "what do the players do?"  With action-adventure RPG's, this is obvious.  The trick then is to figure out exactly what you would do for games in which violence is intended to be secondary or absent.

There is a PC game based on the TV series CSI; the main interface is an image of a crime scene, and the main tool is a zoom facility with which the scene can be examined.  I could imagine a similar process in RPG - the players are given a printed image of at least A4 size and a magnifying glass with which to examine it millimeter by millimeter; the GM has a key that says things like "If they ask about the small red sliver visible under the wardrobe, this will turn out to be a flyer for a club in the city centre - give the players Prop 3".

Even so, the total elimination of violence is not necessarily desirable, but we should surely be able to devise games in which violence is not central.  And, not because "violence is bad", but because violence alone is ultimately repetitive and boring.

[Rob Carriere]

The trick then is to figure out exactly what you would do for games in which violence is intended to be secondary or absent.

Stupid pithy answer: anything you are interested in.

More seriously, that's a much harder question than I thought it would be. Since I started RPG-ing again 6 years ago, I've been averaging roughly 1 hour of violent action per 200 hours of play in games I GM and set up (I've also run a couple of stock D20 modules, which obviously have a rather different score). The guy who is my favorite GM at the moment has a very similar score.

So I ought to be able to pop off an answer or three off the top of my head, right? Well, no. Not a generic one. And that may be one reason why a default assumption like combat, which is both well-known as a story phenomenom and easy to spot, is such a powerful lure. The alternatives are there, but you have to go hunt for them.

What you want in the game is tension between what players want for their characters and the way the world around them is going.

Popping a guy with a submachine gun out of the bushes is an easy way to do that: I (usually) want my PC to live and the world has now posed a direct threat to that goal.

Actual play example: I was playing this character who was (something very close to) a D&D Yuan-Ti who'd been sent to here&now to investigate and clobber some trouble with a secret Yuan-Ti operation in London. Instead, she gets whacked over the head by a very powerful demon and wakes up believing that she's this very poor woman from New York with three teen-age daughters. Very soon, it becomes clear to her that Something Is Up with those daughters and if she can't find out what it is and stop it, they'll all die.

The character's goals should be pretty clear :-)
I the player knew that the Something Up was whatever it was that kept the identity-change magic up. So, my goals are: (1) I would like to see Barbara (the fake identity) succeed with saving her daughters. I liked her!. (2) I want to free Solosse (the Yuan-Yi identity), but (3) I don't want to kill Barbara, and (4) I want to know who did this and what I can do about it.

As you can see, (2) and (3) are in direct conflict and (2) is in probable conflict with (1). Also persuing (4) too far is likely to kill the character, considering the power level of the demon.

So, I gotsta make hard choices. And I'm constantly looking over my shoulder because there is absolutely no guarantee that the world (in the person of the GM pushing me) will not try to force particular choices on me. Lots of tension, very exciting play, no violence in sight.

But...that whole mess was custom-built for that particular player (me) playing that particular character. I really liked it and the others really liked me playing it through, but none of them would have wanted that situation for themselves. And similarly, I really liked seeing the other players play through messes they got dealt, but I wouldn't have liked to play those nearly as much.

Compare with "3d4 bugbears wander into the camp during the d4-th watch", which will work with almost any D20 party of the proper level.

Long meandering, time for a conclusion.

I think you will have a gripping game as long as you make sure all the players (including the GM) have goals they want to but cannot be sure of achieving. Even more so if the goals have apparent contradictions between them, because now the player cannot help but escalate.

Setting that up requires figuring out what everybody is (going to be) invested in, so there's a customization step involved that makes this process a lot less obvious than the adversity through violence approach.

Oh, and in response to an earlier post by Miskatonic: while Barbara never told her boss to go fuck himself, there was this guy who tried to buy off the debt that was crippling her financially and she did tell him where to stuff it and how far. (But no, I've never seen detailed sim of a Roman orgy either :-)

SR
--

[ewilen]

.I could imagine a similar process in RPG - the players are given a printed image of at least A4 size and a magnifying glass with which to examine it millimeter by millimeter; the GM has a key that says things like "If they ask about the small red sliver visible under the wardrobe, this will turn out to be a flyer for a club in the city centre - give the players Prop 3".

Right. What you're doing is taking a mechanic which is enjoyable in the abstract ("Where's Waldo") and connecting it to a roleplaying resolution more-or-less representationally.

If you wanted to play "Path to Recovery" using a card game mechanic, maybe you'd get to draw cards from a "good" deck when you did certain positive things. Those cards would assist accomplishing other intermediate or final goals. When you failed, you might have to lose a card or draw from a "negative" deck, with the negative card impeding you as long as it's in play. Interactions between cards would provide some depth. "I have to eliminate my debt before I can move out of my abusive mother's basement, but I need a job. Ah, I just met a helpful acquaintance (roleplayed) who hooked me up with an interview! If I can hold down a job, I'll be drawing a positive card every scene so eventually I'll get the money card I need to discard the debt card."

[Larry L.]

Sean,

Obviously, since "traditional" designs concentrate to a large extent on combat rules, these will encourage combat. A competition-oriented player figures out that this is where all the "game" is at, and it's mechanically more interesting than, say, a simple skill roll. In these systems, sessions without combat play a lot like freeform games.

More telling, then: In your experience, have you seen players choose to engage in violence over other activities in systems with generic conflict resolution? If, say, a pie eating contest is handled mechanically identically to a duel to the death, and either is a valid way of settling a dispute in the game world, do we still choose violence?

Also, how much of this can be pinned on genre? Swordplay is central to a lot of fantasy. Clobberin' is central to a lot of superhero comics. Are RPGs unusually violence-focused by genre standards? Or perhaps what you're really taking issue with is that RPGs usually focus on violent genres?

Trying to nail this down before this thread goes horribly out of control.

BTW, I am now totally contemplating a M.A.S.H. game with Primetime Adventures.

[Bill Cook]

More telling, then: In your experience, have you seen players choose to engage in violence over other activities in systems with generic conflict resolution? If, say, a pie eating contest is handled mechanically identically to a duel to the death, and either is a valid way of settling a dispute in the game world, do we still choose violence?

That's a good question. The "same mechanic for everything," conflict-resolving systems that I've played that I can think of offhand are Sorcerer and DitV. Sorcerer's is so implicit .. that I think it's a stretch to fit this category, though I've heard and accede to arguments that it does. (Still, my heart's not behind what my head agrees to, in this case.)

To focus on DitV then, the answer is "no." The players were all over the map. They resolved: tracking down a chicken thief, exorcising a demon, resisting social pressure to drink, admonishing one of the Faithful to forsake a saloon harlot and join his congregation in worship, etc. Oh, and there was a shootout in a gambling hall.

** ** **

Another anecdote that comes to mind is TROS' chargen. It's kind of a Frankenstein. You can choose to prioritize several different arenas for development, only one of which relates to combat. For my group's campaign, I guess I was feeling rebellious, because I chose to create a character that emphasized non-combat ability. (I think my subconscious motivation went something like this: "So it's the sh!t for killing stuff. Is it good for anything else?" I was still new to the idea of mechanics targeting player motivation and was working through my skepticism.)

I share this to make the point: there can be a counter reaction to heavy combat emphasis, with or without unified mechanical treatment.

[ADGBoss]

Whew stepped out for the weekend and suddenly got some great responses.

I think this question has several layers which for me make it very interesting. I want to kind of comment on each one and maybe if people feel like we can take it to new threads? If not that's cool too.  I think some of the feedback so far has been pretty darn good.

1). Game Mechanics. I get this vision of new game designers (myself included) who sit down at the table (or computer or whatever) and make a list of needs for their game. The list looks like this:

A.   Figure out which dice to use! D6, D10, or D20 (or maybe get radical with a D4 or D8 or D12...)
B.   Figure out 4 to 8 Stats
C.   Figure out Alternative to Hit Points which does the same thing, based on Stats
D.   MAKE AWESOME COMBAT MECHANIC WHICH SUCKS OFF THE HIT POINT ALTERNATIVE!!!!
E.   Oh skills, yeah.... I will need melee skills, and firearm skills, and oh yeah something about science maybe?
F.   Make Armor and Weapon Charts
G.   Include Paladin 'cause even godless commies need one...

It's inertia, plain and simple. Games HAVE been designed like that (more or less) for decades (yes decades now) and they will unfortunately continue along this trend for some time to come.  I do not even buy the argument that violent conflict resolution (i.e. Combat) is the easiest thing to design in a game, because obviously it is not. I would wager that most people never question the inclusion of some role for combat in their game.

As a side note, Mike Holmes said this very well in his standard Rant #3 which for some reason I cannot find to link but will as soon as I can.

2) Violence as Thrilling and Interesting. Well there is not doubt that violent conflict is entertaining from a Movie, TV, Book, spectator point of view. We play games to get that thrill of life & death. So I ask what thrill of life and death struggle are you talking about? For the console and computer games you can save and start over. For RPGs you can just make a new one or get rezz'ed. Thrill comes from story not from mindless violence. When life & death have meaning, as much meaning as you can fit into an RPG without taking yourself too seriously, that provides Thrills in my opinion. Stress relief comes from mindless violence . That I will agree with and it is fun. No doubt.

However, I think there are dozens of possible ways to have life and death struggle or even non life and death struggle and still have thrills. Climbing Mount Everest comes to mind and others mentioned being a lawyer or stock broker. Sure some people are bored by such things because you can do them in real life. Well some people can. Some people can kill folks with a sword too. It just happens to be illegal in most societies. I would also add that climbing Everest would be beyond the skills of most of us and thus would provide an exciting RPG. That is just one example.

3) Morality. There was on some people's parts this idea that I wanted to make games without violence or wanted to censor (my word) violence in RPGs. Folks trust me, I want to do no such thing.  I can think of only one of my own designs which does not have the low hum of possible violent conflict. I also could care less what and how other people play except that as a designer, I am seeking to understand Players and my fellow designers.

However, the way we design games and how we design them and what we design into them can have an effect on people. I think we should all be conscious of this. At times it is an affected fact that in a game the Players will be required to commit virtual genocide to achieve their goals. That's not normal except in some fantasy novels and rare occasions in real life. The violence becomes mindless and if this not the point of the game, then it probably does not need to be included.  It just seems superfluous.

Final comments. I know that a game without any violence can be created and there are some good examples already out there. I was not seeking out how to design them per se as much as I was trying to understand our need for violence in RPGs. I do think genre does have something to do with it and I think tradition (read inertia) has a great deal to do with it.  I am not sure I fully understand it all yet but I am closer.

As far as censoring violence or indeed anything, I am dead against it. However, that does not mean that we as designers should not be aware of what we design and to be sure that when we include violent resolution in our games, that there is a point to it and that it adds to the design, instead of relying solely on tradition or "just because."

Sean

[M. J. Young]

More telling, then: In your experience, have you seen players choose to engage in violence over other activities in systems with generic conflict resolution? If, say, a pie eating contest is handled mechanically identically to a duel to the death, and either is a valid way of settling a dispute in the game world, do we still choose violence?

Certainly I have seen players choose violence over some other option; but I've also seen the choose the other option.

There was a D&D campaign I ran years ago in which a cavalier and a druid were in the same rather large party. The druid felt that the only way he could truly express his chaotic and evil principles in a party that was mostly good with strong lawful tendencies was by playing a lot of stupid pranks on the other characters. The cavalier thought this insulting. Eventually the cavalier challenged the druid to a duel. The druid leapt at the opportunity, and insisted that choice of weapons would be snowballs in the courtyard.  Thus honor was satisfied when the cavalier absolutely creamed the druid in a snowball fight, and no one was hurt.

If that doesn't qualify as a non-violent option, I've seen tons of them in Multiverser and quite a few in the little bit of Legends of Alyria I've played. I've also seen players choose violence. To some degree, you choose that which gives you the edge. Thus if a game encourages building strong combat characters, you're likely to perceive combat as your forte, and rely on it whenever it will solve your problems. If the game offers alternatives through which a player has a strong chance of success without resorting to violence (or having everything hinge on a single roll of the dice), those get used.

--M. J. Young